Self Education: How to Protect Your Kids From Brain Rot

Most kids today haven't been given the chance to truly learn. They are spoon-fed information and with the constant distraction of screens at every turn, it slowly dulls their ability to think. They're rushed from one activity to another with little time to imagine or solve problems on their own. And that's how we end up with kids who not only struggle to learn, but don't even enjoy learning at all. So let's talk about how we can prevent this from happening. Kids are losing the desire to learn. Real learning happens when a child is engaged. Charlotte Mason once said, Self-education is the only possible education. The rest is mere veneer laid on the surface of When kids are intrinsically motivated, they will propel themselves forward and they will keep learning even when you're off, when you're not doing school or when they're not in school. We tend to think that giving a kid an education means filling them with information. This is one of the reasons for standardized tests. They want to measure how much a child knows. But giving them information is only a part of it. The most important part is raising kids who love to learn. This reminds me of an old quote that says, education isn't the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire. When kids are curious and they're engaged in learning, they take ownership of their work. And this is the kind of intrinsic motivation we want our kids to have. This is where real learning happens. If you're new here on the channel, hi, my name is Sheri. I'm a Christian homeschooling mom. My husband and I have 10 children ages 21 down to three. I'm a former public school teacher and I've been homeschooling now for 16 years. I love encouraging other moms here on my channel and on the blog, our life homeschooling.com. You can also find me on made to homeschool, which is a community to support homeschooling families. We've been homeschooling for many years now. And I have seen this play out with my own kids in so many ways. I, when we started homeschooling, I really thought that I had to teach my kids everything, every single subject separately. As a former public school teacher, I had this idea that each child had to be taught individually, every subject, the idea of self-education was completely foreign to me. And I was kind of pushed into having our kids start doing more independently, simply out of necessity. We were homeschooling and we started having more children. The more children we had, I just wasn't able to teach them everything. And at this point in our homeschooling experience, I was starting to get a little nervous because I didn't think moving my kids towards independence was necessarily a good thing. I was still in that mentality that I had to teach everything and I had to, it was the filling of a pail. But as I moved our kids toward independence, I found the opposite to be true. They started taking ownership of their work. And when we were off, they were still learning. They would get interested in various ideas and they would keep trying new things. They would be interested in science experiments or cooking or starting a new business idea or some kind of craft or hobby. Slowly my thinking changed and I realized that kids really do love to learn. They are born persons. They have all the curiosity and drive that we have as adults if they're given the opportunity and the encouragement to use it. One of the ways that I've seen this drive to learn come alive in our kids is by limiting their schedule. When kids are rushed here and there from one activity to the other, it's a constant flurry of excitement, getting everything ready, getting everyone out the door, having to make sure you have everything you need, and then the coming home, everyone's exhausted. We are so busy that our kids' minds don't have time to pause and think, to reflect, and to have ideas and be curious. Parents feel the pressure to constantly entertain their kids. They get nervous if their kids are bored. They don't realize that this is a chance to give them all kinds of raw materials, wood, play-doh, give them musical instruments, give them free time, send them outside. This is an opportunity for them to learn. Just today we finished our school work a little bit after lunch and our kids all split up and they were all doing different things. It was so interesting to me. A couple of our middle kids went out to the garage and they were working out with weights. My husband, when he gets home, will sometimes work out out there and they wanted to do some of those exercises even though he wasn't here. My other daughter was inside. She was playing the piano. She had a friend over. They were playing the piano and cello together. Our 18 year old son finished his work. He went to the gym, was working out, and then went out with some friends for a hike. Our one daughter has taught herself to play the flute so she got that out and she was working on some songs. Our other daughter went down into a wooded area and was reading a book. They were all done with school but they were still learning and growing. With homeschooling our kids have had so much free time and this has been such an advantage for them. Our older two boys started a mobile car detailing business. Our one daughter started a micro bakery. They just have had time to pursue their interests and their passions. I remember one day when our oldest son, this is several years ago, we finished school and he was working on a robot. He spent a lot of time on this. He put it together and then he took all of us outside and was using a remote control to manipulate this robot that he had made and it was just a really fun day to see the result of his work that he'd been working on for a couple days. So often our younger kids after we're done with school will go outside and play. We have an old shed where they'll collect berries and pine cones and seeds and make all these imaginary worlds and it's just beautiful to see. Our kids have made up plays. They've done poetry contests. This is the kind of learning that happens when kids don't have a frantic lifestyle. I talk a lot more about this in the course that I've created, Beyond School, The Home Education Breakthrough. This is a brand new course. It's coming out April 7th. That's the launch date and I'm so excited to share it with you. In the course I teach ordinary parents how they can give their kids a better education at home. It's a family first approach. It's for people that are brand new to homeschooling and current homeschoolers who want to learn from an experienced homeschool mom. It's a mom mentorship. If I could take you by the hand and teach you everything I've learned step by step in our 16 years of homeschooling, this is what I'm doing in that course. So I'll leave the link below if you'd like to get on the wait list. A second thing that has made the biggest difference in our family to spur our kids on to learning is to limit screen time. Screens are a constant distraction and we've perfected this over the years. We get to certain points where we think okay this this is working really well and then time will go by and we'll need to re-look at it again and think again. And as kids grow it changes too once they get an email account and once they have more friends and they want to reach out with their friends and it's good for them to have those connections. It also changes as kids get older and you want them to use the internet to learn these skills because you can learn anything you want to on the internet. So this changes a little bit with time but especially when children are very young they need to have limited screen time. I talk more in a video about how we handle screens in our home. I'll link that for you if you'd like to look at that more specifically. But parents are pressured at younger and younger ages to give their kids phones and the kids themselves often pressure parents because they want more screen time. And this can be challenging for parents but when you have a home atmosphere that has limited screens kids learn to entertain themselves. One thing I've noticed with our kids is that the more access they have to screens the less time they spend reading good books. And we all know that reading a book is the kind of deep thinking that challenges our kids minds. So putting good boundaries in place when it comes to screens is really what helps protect their childhood and their young minds. The longer we've been homeschooling the more value we've seen in teaching our kids practical life skills. This is something many kids just don't learn. We see everything through the lens of a textbook or through the standards of what has to be taught. But life skills will give your kids more confidence. The more skills a child learns the more they will be able to learn on their own. When you bring your kids along with you when you're cooking or when you're going to the bank when you're doing the bills and filling out the checkbook when you have conversations with them about all these things how to budget your money when you start a garden and you're harvesting and bringing all that food in and preserving it. These activities teach children to problem solve. They challenge kids in very real and practical ways. When our kids were all younger we lived in a smaller house that had just a small property around us but we tried to think of different ways that we could rearrange our lifestyle so that we had more opportunities for our kids to learn different skills. So my husband bought a ton of wood and tools. He just came up with small projects that he could work on with our sons. Building a little stool for the kids bathroom things like that and this would get everyone engaged. We even though we had a small property we started a garden. Our backyard was completely shaded so we couldn't have a garden in our backyard so we just put it right out in our front yard. At first I was nervous about what neighbors would think but over time it was so beautiful and this gave our kids something to go out and see and look for. They would go out every day in the summer seeing what was coming up, what new vegetable or berry was growing on the vine and it gave them something to do. All the fruit that we harvested and the vegetables we would bring in and they would help prepare it. They took ownership of it because they were a part of the whole process. So think of ways that you can rearrange your lifestyle maybe even different hobbies you can pick up that you can bring your kids along to teach them some life skills. My husband and I also love music and he taught himself to play the guitar and so we have a piano here, we have a guitar here and our kids have had the same interest. When your kids see you picking up a hobby maybe for you it's not a musical instrument maybe it's something completely different but our kids have seen our interest in it and so they take interest in it. Our two sons have taught themselves to play guitar and our other kids play piano. These are skills that keep kids busy and keep their minds occupied. Another thing that's really helped us is to get our kids outside. I can't tell you how many times I've said to the kids all right everybody outside go outside. We want them to be out in nature. When you're outside all five senses are alive. There's more to see, to hear, to smell. There is so much to be learned and it just also just calms your soul. If there's something you're upset about something about being outside in the fresh air just takes some of that burden off. It slows your mind and helps you focus. I've noticed this with the kids if I'm ever stressed out or just getting anxious about things we'll go out for a walk and we come back completely different. My mind is relaxed the kids have gotten their energy out. If you want your kids to sleep better at night get them outside. It engages their minds and it keeps them busy. So as you educate your kids change your thinking from a fill the pail style of learning to how can we raise lifelong learners? How can we adjust our lifestyle? What kind of hobbies can we pick up? What kinds of things can we bring around our house? We've recently moved a few years ago to a place with a little bit more property so now we have chickens that we raise all summer long and we these are meat for our family for the year. We have some pigs that we raise and two of them we exchange for beef with a friend. This keeps our kids busy it gives everyone something to do. Think how you can arrange your family lifestyle maybe it won't be homesteading skills maybe it'll be something completely different but in ways that engage your kids minds and keep them continually learning. We don't want to be spoon feeding our kids we want to be providing them the opportunities around them to get involved and to try things on their own. So if we want to raise kids who actually want to learn the change needs to happen with us as parents. Less spoon feeding, more ownership. Less scheduling, more margin. Less screens and more books. Less doing everything for them and more giving them chances to solve problems on their own. We're not trying to control every outcome we're trying to raise thinkers, lifelong learners. If this has encouraged you I hope you'll like and subscribe. Thanks for watching. I do one video a week on homeschooling encouragement for everyday moms. I'll see you next week.